The present invention generally relates to an information carrier and a recording/reproducing apparatus for specifying a reproducible apparatus in connection with software of music, video image and so on, and an apparatus for initializing the information carrier.
In recent years, various kinds of media of software for music, images and so on are supplied, and the protection of copyrights becomes a problem. The protection of the copyrights becomes especially an important problem, because information of digitalized music and images, and digital information such as programs, data, and so on of the computers are not substantially deteriorated if the information is repeatedly copied. A method of a copyright protection is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,231,546, where it is inhibited to make a second generation digital copy from a software whose copyright is protected but it is not inhibited to make a direct digital copy from the software.
In this method, there is a problem in that it cannot be inhibited for each user to copy. So long as a copying operation is effected directly from an original information carrier where information whose copyrights of music, images and so on should be protected is recorded, the number of the copying operation is limitless.